The explosion at a fertilizer plant in Basra, which also set an oil pipeline on fire, is now being blamed on a guerrilla’s bomb.

Another bomb in West Baghdad wounded at least 5 civilians some three ours later, and may have hurt some US troops.

The Times adds:

“Brigadier Ayad Imad Mehdi [of the Ministry of Defense] died when three insurgents stopped his car and shot him dead before fleeing. Gunmen also killed an Interior Ministry official, Colonel Muhammad al-Taie, in a separate attack.”

Defense and Interior at the two main Iraqi security bureaucracies, and targeting capable persons at their top is a way for the guerrillas to cripple attempts to combat them.

Tim Phelps of Newsday reports that some experts think the guerrillas are attempting to cut Baghdad off from the rest of the country, encircling it so as to strengthen the Sunni position.

Pat Lang argues that this is a civil war. It may be, of an odd guerrilla sort.

Sunni politicians are complaining bitterly about the demands for ideological conformity coming from the Shiite religious parties that dominate the new government.

Iraq expert Phebe Marr thinks the Sunni Arab problem is not going away and that the American public will have to get more realistic about the situation.